Opinion is free

A San Francisco start-up on Monday is expected to begin offering its users a new way to do Web browsing: customizable keyword shortcuts.Created by a company called OpenDNS, the idea is to allow people to create keywords that point to favorite Web sites. Gadget buffs could link that word to CNET News.com sister site Crave, for example, so they would be taken there merely by typing “gadgets” into their browser’s address bar.Read more..

Personally I don’t think this is anything really new, browsers have been taking advantage of keywords in the address bar for a while now. Seems kinda like another gimmicky way for OpenDNS to make money by assigning certain paid websites to keywords. At worst we could see this seriously abused, and become yet another form of spam.

Seems like CNET is hyping it quite a bit, but decide for yourself. I have nothing against OpenDNS by the way, I use them quite a bit when I have an ISP’s DNS act badly.

Popularity: 55% [?]

Dell has reversed a decision to solely ship the new version of Windows, Vista

Dell decided on this move after hearing suggestions(or complaints, depending on how you look at them) not to ‘eliminate XP just yet’. The reasons primarily include familiarity and product compatibility. On another interesting note, Dell will be shipping Linux on their desktops after hearing a related vote.

XP can be purchased on models: Dimension E520 and E521 desktops, Inspiron 1501, E1405, E1505, and E1705 notebooks. The option is only open to US customers.

You would think Microsoft would be slightly nervous at this decision, but meanwhile they’re trying to keep a solid speech. “Dell is responding appropriately to a small minority of customers that had this specific request,” Microsoft product manager Michael Burk said in a statement. “But, as they have said before, the vast majority of consumers want the latest and greatest technology, and that includes Windows Vista.” Whether that’s true or not, manufacturers will only be able to pre-install XP on systems until Jan. 31, 2008 when product support is terminated.

Popularity: 13% [?]

Ever wanted to quickly search across common social networks? yoName allows you to search across MySpace, LinkedIn, Digg, FaceBook, Friendster, Match, and Xanga. You can enter the person’s email, username, or first/last name.

So go ahead and see what you can find from that username you remember, or maybe even an embarrassing MySpace page(which thankfully you don’t have to wade through blinding colors to locate).

One note though, interestingly enough, if you search using someone’s email, it will send them a one-time message stating that someone looked them up. So, think twice if you’re using it to stalk somebody, considering the fact that it’s creepy too.

Popularity: 18% [?]

March’s Comscore numbers have been released. Jeremy Liew has done an interesting analysis on the figures, the results may surprise you.

In regards to that however, it’s unclear how accurate this really is, you can imagine how these statistics would change if sampled from a certain other group of web surfers.

Feedback is being thrown around over this considering the diversity of the sites. Since a lot of people would rather not have their web history tracked, we’ll probably never get a fully accurate look.

Popularity: 14% [?]

Unless you’ve been living in a hole the last few months or so, you may have noticed that Google is slowly trying to get into the software game. We’ve got GMail, Google Docs and Spreadsheets, Google Calender, Google Base, and now a Google presentation app recently unveiled at the Web 2.0 Expo.

Also, Google is offering all this for free(or, perpetual beta it seems). We can already see tech support on these items for $50/month with Google Apps Premier Edition. Although I wouldn’t expect Microsoft jump to their guns just yet, while things are still in infancy.

OpenOffice.org is another worth mentioning competitor, with it being free/open-source software, and longer developed. So, which will you use?

Related articles:
http://blogs.pcworld.com/techlog/archives/004140.html
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/04/were-expecting.html

Popularity: 12% [?]